University of Illinois emergency ventilator project finds a manufacturer

Less than two months after they started to design a low-cost ventilator for emergency use, engineers and doctors at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have cleared the biggest hurdle they faced — finding a company to build the machines.

Of all the efforts to build portable, lower-cost ventilators to help treat COVID-19 patients who are unable to breathe on their own, the U. of I. model is among the simplest, and the cheapest. The ventilator runs off of oxygen pressure — without electricity — and the manufacturer says it will cost less than $200.

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The university reached an agreement this month with Belkin, a maker of cellphone chargers and other accessories, to manufacture 10,000 ventilators a month at a factory in Rhode Island, according to the company.

U. of I. engineers spent about three weeks designing and testing prototypes, including using them on pigs. The result was an emergency ventilator small and cheap enough to be stockpiled by the thousands, said William King, a professor of mechanical engineering.

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“It’s a relatively simple device,” King said. “The one we designed is less than half a pound. It’s smaller than a loaf of bread, and it has around 20 mechanical components.”

The project was launched in mid-March when doctors at Carle Health, the university-affiliated hospital system in Champaign-Urbana, reached out to the engineering faculty and expressed concern about the possibility of ventilator shortages if central Illinois was overrun with COVID-19 cases.

“Carle was planning for a worst-case scenario, where there would be hundreds, or even thousands, of patients in our community that needed a ventilator and one would not be available to them,” King said. “Of course, this situation has not transpired, very fortunately for us. But around this time, there were many communities around the country and around the world that were grappling with the exponential increase in COVID cases and the potential that some hospitals would be overwhelmed.”

The university decided to make the design available as a free license to anybody interested. More than 60 companies, across 15 countries, have become licensees. But Belkin will be the first to actually make the machines.

California-based Belkin is owned by Foxconn Interconnect Technologies, a subsidiary of the massive Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Foxconn Technology Group. Foxconn Internet Technologies and U. of I. have an existing relationship, as the company announced a $50 million gift last year to fund a partnership with the university to build a new technology development center for the Grainger College of Engineering. The company also has an office in the university’s research park in Champaign.

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“We’ve been having extensive conversations with them about all kinds of things, and this was something we were working on that they were interested in, as well,” King said. Foxconn sent the design to Belkin to be built.

Belkin has applied for emergency approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which the company hopes will be awarded by the end of May, a spokeswoman said.

Given the unpredictable demands of the pandemic, company officials say they won’t know what the demand for the devices is until they clear FDA approval and get into the market.

“There is concern the virus will come back in the summer and fall and that it would be prudent to prepare for potential surges,” said Belkin spokeswoman Jen Warren. “In an earlier, more critical stage of the pandemic, it was clear there was a critical need for ventilators and not just for the short term.”